Luxury home marketers: Describe your client.
- Is he a spare-no-expenses shopper buying the best-of-the-best to appoint his luxury home?
- Is she the consummate hostess, willing to hire a designer to help her create the perfect setting for her frequent gatherings?
- Is she a do-it-yourselfer, craving the satisfaction and budget-pleasing result of doing the work herself?
- Or does she shop only when she needs to replace a worn out item, then walk right by the most up-to-date styles in search of comfort; in other words, is she just not that into home?
"Marketing isn't sitting back and waiting for the customer to come to you; you have to take your message to the customer," says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of "Home is Where the Style Is," the new report detailing trends affecting luxury consumers' home redecorating, remodeling, and improvement projects.
"In our research, we isolated four distinct personalities that make up the luxury home market," Danziger says. These are:
- The Castle Keeper: This is the luxury consumer that home marketers love to see coming, with their spare-no-expenses attitude toward shopping for their homes. Their home is their castle, and they want their good taste to be recognized by their peers, so they tend to buy showpiece brands and the most prestigious home decorative items.
- The Hostess: This consumer is focused on home entertaining and pleasing their guests. They will shop in a range of stores and product categories and consult a decorator or designer, all in an effort to make the best impression on those who visit their homes.
- The DIYer: This consumer takes a great deal of pride in trying out new ideas in her home, always on the hunt for inspiration and ideas to try. She would never think of hiring a designer or decorator, as her home is her creation for herself.
- The Nester: This consumer is happy with her home just as it is. Style takes a back seat, because her home is all about comfort, and she demonstrates this by making her biggest purchases in categories that demonstrate her need for comfort.
"If you are a home luxuries marketer, it is not enough to offer a stylish, quality product. You must understand who is most likely to buy your product, where they will shop, and how they will incorporate it in their lives. This new report introduces you to your target market in a way you've never seen them before," says Danziger.
About "Home is Where the Style Is"
This new trend report is the result of a special investigation into how affluents decorate and remodel their home conducted in association with Unity Marketing's 2Q2009 Luxury Tracking Survey, conducted July 3-8, 2010. A total of 1,349 affluent luxury consumers were surveyed about their major home decorating projects in the past year. (avg. income $306,7k and net worth $15.2 million; age 44.8 years; 45 percent male/55 percent female). The results of this investigation are compared with results of a similar survey conducted in 2Q2008.
Key Finding: The market for home luxuries is hot right now
The market for luxury home is particularly strong right now, based on the survey results. A majority of affluents (52 percent) surveyed were involved in a major home remodeling or decorating project in 2009 and first half of 2010 and they spent on average 40 percent more than home remodelers surveyed in 2008. An equal percentage plan to make home changes in the second half or 2010 and through 2011. This report gives home marketers the ammunition to strike while the iron is hot.
The survey questions were designed to help luxury home marketers and brands understand their affluent customers' needs and motivations in home decorating better in order to grow their businesses, included:
- Luxury lifestyle, i.e. do you choose most often the good, better, best option or is luxury just not a part of your lifestyle?
Involvement in major home projects, including remodeling, redecorating, buying new home, buying second home, in past year or plans for next year;
- Amount spent or plan to spend on major home projects;
Room or rooms in home involved in major home project or planned for major projects;
- Factors that influenced home purchases, such as value, store, internet research, designer/decorator recommendations, etc.;
- Sources for home shopping rated by whether the source is a regular, occasional or infrequent shopping destinations. Sources include department stores, home furnishings stores, discount store, internet, mail order, home improvement store, furniture store, specialty appliance dealer, interior decorator/home design store, mail order or television shopping;
- Use of a decorator or designer, including type of decorator, importance of services, such as access to furnishings not available elsewhere; expertise in combining colors; saves time; saves money, etc.;
- Favorite styles for home decorating; and
Attitudes about home decorating and home styles.
Special Feature: Four different luxury consumer personalities are identified, based upon a psychographic analysis of affluent's attitudes and motivations in home decorating. Learn how to sell more effectively to each of these distinctive luxury home personality consumers.
This report tracks trends in home luxury market since 2008
The results of the current quarter's survey are compared with similar survey questions presented in the 2Q2008 luxury tracking study. This provides ability for marketers to track trends in the market for luxury home decorating and remodeling.
As each wave of tracking studies is fielded, special topics of interest to luxury marketers are researched in more depth and published in a separate trend report. In the second quarter 2010 Unity Marketing's Luxury Tracking Study investigated the luxury home market. The results of this investigation will be compared with results of a similar survey conducted in 2Q2008.
For more information, visit http://www.unitymarketingonline.com
Pamela N. Danziger is an internationally recognized expert specializing in consumer insights for marketers targeting the affluent consumer. She is president of Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm she founded in 1992. Pam received the Global Luxury Award for top luxury industry achievers presented at the Global Luxury Forum in 2007 by Harper's Bazaar.
Pam gives luxury marketers "All Access" to the mind of the luxury consumer. She uses qualitative and quantitative market research to learn about their brand preferences, shopping habits, and attitudes about their luxury lifestyles, then turns these insights into actionable strategies for marketers to use to reach these high spending consumers. Unity Marketing is the voice of the luxury consumer for such clients as PPR, Diageo, Tempur-Pedic, Google, Swarovski, Constellation Wines, Luxottica, Orient-Express Hotels, Italian Trade Commission, Marie Claire magazine, The World Gold Council, and The Conference Board.
She is currently working on a new book, Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury, to be published in late 2010 by Paramount Market Publishing. Her other books include Shopping: Why We Love It and How Retailers Can Create the Ultimate Customer Experience, published by Kaplan Publishing in October 2006; Let Them Eat Cake: Marketing Luxury to the Masses—as well as the Classes, (Dearborn Trade Publishing, $27, hardcover) and Why People Buy Things They Don't Need: Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior (Chicago: Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2004).